was going, he pointed out correctly, was a government agency for boys and girls under the age of eighteen. The agency is small and virtually unknown even among the press in Bogotá, partly because its administrators prefer it that wa The forty or so youths who gather there every day are recent defectors from the FARC and other guerrilla groups, and they are the focus of a certain amount of hostil- ity among their neighbors. The taxi- driver knew about the teen-age desert- ers, though, and he appeared to lump them together with lawless youths at large and the motorcyclists and pedestri- ans he seemed intent on running down. "Scoundrels-all of them," he raged as we approached the defectors' house. "Now that Uribe is going to get elected, they'll see what's what. They're all trash, a plague, and the only way to get rid of them is by eliminating them, and the way you eliminate them is with a bullet to the forehead. Don't you agree?" I ended up spending a lot of time at the defectors' house, listening to their stories: "A guerrilla group shot my uncle because he belonged to the FARC," one boy told me. "I didn't get past seventh grade be- cause my uncle was the one who was pay- ing for me to stud I joined the guerril- las because I like to fight. I like weapons. I left after a few years because one of the girls I slept with in my patrol area asked, 'What meaning do you see in all this?' and I thought about it and I decided she was right, and I deserted two days later." By and large, the boys and girls at the center were from the backcount They had been in combat and had shot sol- diers, but thèir outlook was different from that of the mad young killers who brought the drug-trafficking city of Medellín a certain fame back in the nineties. Dut)r, and not anarchy; played a dominant role in their lives. There was Jorge, for example, who had ears like trumpets and mud-green eyes, and looked famished. He was only now prac- ticing his reading skills, he told me, be- cause from the time he was old enough to carry a load he'd been working too hard in the fields to have time for school. An only child of an abandoned mother who then abandoned him as well-to his grandmother, who put him to work- he discovered in his teens that he had a half brother. The two quickly became close, but then some men who were looking to shoot someone who was sup- posed to be wearing a red shirt killed his brother, who was wearing a red shirt, too. "And then I killed the one who killed him," Jorge said. '1\nd then I had to run away to the mountains." Where he comes from, he explained, there are rules of conduct. He was sixteen. For a couple of years, according to Jorge, he was basically satisfied with life. "Up there, they give you three meals a day;" he said. And the guerrillas told him about how they all had to fight to change the country; so that the narcos would dis- appear, and theft and kidnappings would be a thing of the past, and he agreed with that and felt useful. But he had fallen madly in love with a young guerrilla (the FARC estimates that thirty per cent of its fighting force consists of young women), and, he said, "she began having a lot of problems with her kidneys." I told him I didn't see the connection between this fact and his desertion, but to him it was obvious. "Up there, if you're useless they kill you," he said. He realized that his girlfriend might be in trouble when his commander announced that Jorge was being transferred to the Amazon region but the girl would have to stay behind. He plotted their escape immediately, and she is at the center with him now, with their baby, while he struggles with the city and the alphabet. The kids at the house have a lot of time to think back fondly on their guer- rilla days. "It was a good life," a boy named Luis said, forgetting what he'd told me earlier-that his pregnant girl- friend had been shot beside him by the police, that the guerrillas' disregard for the common people upset him, that he'd been set to carrying heavy loads for miles despite a bad knee, because his unit com- mander had it in for him. At least back in the mountains he had a role to pla "I joined the guerrillas because my family has been in this forever, ever since the days of La Violencia," he said finally; in answer to my insistent questions about how he made his choices. '1\nd we're al- ways divided: some of the brothers go into the military, and the other brothers, or the cousins, join the guerrillas. That's just the way it is." It is a stupid cycle of violence, but for years Colombians on all sides seem to have been willing to think that it is fate, and in the immediate fu- ture that may well be the case. + The story of "an insurgency, and a momentous one." -Wall Street Journal "F ase i nati ng." -Gore Vidal "An engaging look at how the Net revolution is playing out in a nation where the rules of capitalism don't apply." -Newsweek CHINA DAWN The Story of a Technology and Business Revolution by David Sheff "Should be required reading, as it chronicles history in the making." -Anchee Min "An arresting read.... China, at the turn of the century, comes alive." -Salon. com AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD = HarperBusiness ,.. . " ' An Im h PrÙII of 1 " I.arperCollinsPllblishers www.arpercolns.com ':'. .:....:.:.:-:-:.;.:-:.:-..-. ;::. .; .;:. .:: ." ....-."N..."...........,........... ,' ." .' . ." ""'i , :ì,.<<,,,,, i l ii l :",.. 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